Spectacular World

He was falling.

Actually, he was sinking.

Actually, actually, the ground was swallowing him up; he was sinking into it, and then he was falling.

Jack Larison felt his body twist and be flung around as the ground dragged him down. He went down further and further, and then, when it finally spat him out, he crashed into a harsh and cold stone floor. He could hear the rattling of chains, the squeaking of rats, and the howls of the damned all around him. The temperature kept dropping, getting lower and lower, and he felt his body shake. He was in hell.

"No." A flicker of blue exploded out of him as he forced his energy up and washed it over himself, blanketing his body in it. He felt his flesh burn for a moment, and then when he looked down at his hands, they were back to normal. He wasn't a goblin, or a kid, or whatever the hell had just happened. He was back to himself. It didn't matter what sort of illusion this was; he was able to shatter Fairy Queens easily, and he had only grown in power since then, so breaking out of this one would be easy. He was a grown adult, a man, a warrior. Not some scared kid- Then he looked around at where he was, and he lost it. "Gah."

Battery vomited.

He threw up, unable to hold it in as he was hit with a wave of revulsion. He had covered himself in energy and burned away the illusion placed on him, but the world he was now in, the one made up of his mind, hadn't faded.

He was in a familiar place. It was the place he had grown up in. Before he met Nier, before he became the nameless rat that lived on the street, before he was Alpha. He had parents, just like anyone else, and for him, his life had been one he had tried to forget.

He was in a dungeon. At least, that's what he called it, for that was the only name it could truly have. It wasn't that big, and it was cold, so cold in fact that he could feel his blood freezing in his veins. There was no light, and chains covered the wall, rusted red in blood. His body ached just looking at it, and his mind tried to suppress it, but he couldn't do it. He was home.

"You really had quite the imagination when you were a kid." A voice asked, a little amused.

Battery wiped his chin and stood back up. He tried to stop the shaking in his legs, but he wasn't very successful. "Yeah... I guess you could say that. I- I don't remember much of it, but it wasn't like this. Not really. There was no king, no princess, no castle, or dungeon. It was a basement. A mom. A father. A city. One that didn't know I existed or chose to look the other way. This is just a recreation of a childish mind trying to grapple with the truth of the life they had to live through at the time. I guess back then I created this scenario to try and cope because it felt less cruel that way."